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Spies, East and West
Beijing will recruit 10,000 "internet volunteers" to monitor "harmful" websites and content, according to the city's municipal authority information office, via Financial Times.
The US too, is expanding a program to recruit spies among first and second generation college students. According to the Chronicle of Higher Education, the program started as a pilot program, the Pat Roberts Intelligence Scholars Program in 2004. Kansas Republican Pat Roberts initiated the program after September 11, 2001 following urging by a University of Kansas anthropology professor. Professor Felix Moos had shopped the program around for years, arguing that the federal government should provide scholarships for people to attend colleges and learn languages, technical skills, culture and anthropology in order to work for the CIA. The Obama administration would keep the identity of the spies-in-training a secret.
The program has its critics. According to interviews by the Chronicle of Higher Education in 2005, some professors were concerned about the Pat Roberts program and the anonymity of the participants which the government could leverage to essentially spy on professors, as they did during the Cold War. Others argue that the program could instill distrust of all researchers from foreign governments. Still others were concerned about the ethics of mixing spying with academia.
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East is East, Thanks to the West
In other government spy news, the Wall Street Journal writes that Iran is using technology made by Siemens AG and Nokia Corp. to censor internet communications. The technology allows Iranian authorities to block and filter sites and perform deep packet inspection to monitor individuals and control information. Much of the Iranian system operates through a single node at the Telecommunication Infrastructure Co., part of the government telecom monopoly.
Iran controls communications any way it can, according to the WSJ, filtering international connections go through a single gateway, blocking users in the country from accessing millions of sites in the last few years, and at times requiring bloggers to obtain licenses from the government.
Under normal circumstances, all the west's technology helps Iran control the population. And periodically, there are more turbulent times like these, when Iran is "now drilling into what the population is trying to say", Bradley Anstis, director of technical strategy with Marshal8e6 Inc. told the WSJ.....Because if an uprising happens on your dictatorial watch and you don't have the wherewithal to look outside the window, then just -- use Windows?
Notes on Censorship and Security
